For years now, I’ve been hearing complaints from my teenage son that go like this:
“Ugh, this building reminds me of the Backrooms.”
“Did you HAVE to pick a doctor’s office that’s Backrooms-like.”
“Office work just looks like the Backrooms.”
The Backrooms are his generation’s Slender Man – but the movie they, and everyone else, got out of it is much, much cooler than what we got with 2018’s Slender Man (the less said about that disaster, the better).
Yes, A24’s Backrooms has finally made it to streaming, and it’s a banger.
It’s also one of the few movies I’ve been able to get my son to sit down and actually enjoy with me as of late (besides Nolan’s magnificent Odyssey – please try to see it in IMAX if you haven’t already).
I understand panicky articles about zoomers’ attention spans, I do. But if you give them something like Backrooms, directed by the frustratingly young and phenomenally gifted Kane Parsons transitioning seamlessly from YouTube to the big screen, they’re going to forget their Instagram Reels for a while and actually watch.
The concept of the Backrooms, a series of ever-expanding, terrifyingly dingy and nonsensical rooms, shares a lot of its DNA with House of Leaves, but it should be noted that the creepypasta and the book developed independently from each other.
Simply put, there is something about the idea of endless, empty rooms that triggers the animal part of our brains – maybe back from the days when humans were hunter-gatherers and confinement – a separation from nature – meant certain death.
Or maybe it’s just that a space that both expands endlessly and yet is stultifying and confined, a labyrinth you can’t break out from, is especially taxing on the human psyche.
Consider also the decline of the American mall: the empty spaces, the curious leftovers, the sickly lightning, the strange echoes. Zoomers have inherited these sad, haunted places – and a bunch of them are doing something cool with the concept.
It’s no wonder that one of the heroes of Parsons’ film (I am not all up on the creepypasta aside from random tidbits my son has told me, you’ll have to put up with my middle-aged analysis), Clark, despises his life.
Played by a suitably bleary Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clark is the embodiment of the zoomer nightmare – the man no young person wants to turn into. He has collapsed his own marriage, his business is sinking, his temper and drinking are out of control, and he humiliates himself on TV starring in cheesy commercials in order to sell furniture I can only describe as “manic depressive grandma chic.”
Clark seeks help from Dr. Mary Kline, who has demons of her own, but is at least trying to work through them.
The path to healing is a tough one, though, and it’s mostly uphill. Clark wants a detour and he gets one when he discovers that he can pass through a wall in his furniture store’s creepy basement and into the Backrooms – a fascinating but also terrifying and unforgiving place.
The longer you stay, the stranger you become. The Backrooms replicates your memories and warps them. Monsters stalk its halls. Strange monsters, yes, but also creatures of your own making, intimate in a sick way. The worst parts of you come alive, and turn on you.
Clark is so screwed up that he falls in love with the Backrooms – which is bad news for his two young employees and, ultimately, for Dr. Kline herself.
The final act of the movie has been derided by some critics as messy and incomprehensible, but I think it’s ultimately a story about whether or not you accept your own monstrosity or try to outwit it. It’s an old story, in other words, but, at the same time, it also doesn’t get old. Monsters have always been with us – and will always be with us. We manifest them with our misery.
A24 has also confirmed that a sequel is in the works, thank God. I hope it retains the psychotic, dream-like imagery of the original, but gives us more to chew on in terms of the mysterious people who are studying the Backrooms (unbeknownst to Clark), and in terms of Dr. Kline’s arc.
Raised by an agoraphobic, paranoid mother, Dr. Kline is the perfect candidate to see the nightmare that is the Backrooms for what it is – but she’s also a fighter. Played by an understated Renate Reinsve, this is a woman who possesses a secret fire.
A secret fire is exactly what you’re going to need if you’re going to go up against the uncanny.
See also our senior film writer Mark Farnsworth’s review of Backrooms here.